Do I Have Food on My Face or Are You Wildly Signaling a Rescue Helicopter?

Have we become a nation of fastidious slobs? Or is this another annoying age thing?

May 27, 2023

My friend Herb is 82 and if he goes for more than six weeks without getting a haircut he develops Einstein Head. Einstein Head is that halo of flyaway white hair which didn’t even look good even on Einstein, but as he was considered the most brilliant man in the world, no one had the nerve to mention it.

Herb, not to belittle his accomplishments, is a humor writer admired in a widening circle of dead people. He is also my best friend, so when he gets Einstein Head or Cream Cheese Face or any of the grooming afflictions which befall older people, I feel free to call it to his attention, in of course a sensitive and tactful manner.

“Herb,” I say, “Your hair makes you look like a homeless person. If you were to collapse on the street, people would step right over you instead of calling an ambulance. Older people cannot afford to look messy. Groomed, which is code for successful enough to sue you if you don’t call EMS and get me to NYU-Langone pronto, is all we got. Get your hair cut this afternoon.”

(Excuse me, I just got a text from an outraged reader:

Wadler, you ageist creep, I am offended by the use of the word ‘old’ in this or any other context. As the research tells us, eighty is the new 60 and dead is the new 65. You are as young as you act. I, for example, am dictating this from Spin Class, where I am, in calendar years, the oldest person in the room. And this pain shooting up my left arm -- Gasp! Aaargg! -- I left my medical alert bracelet in the locker room….THWONK!!!)

Where was I? Oh, right, the importance of grooming when you qualify for Medicare. As I so often tell Herb, when you are a young person, as he and I and Mick Jagger used to be, you have a certain amount of leeway.

You’re a man in your thirties and your hair is curling around your neck? You’re a free spirit, with the virility of a romance hero in a floppy shirt. You haven’t shaved in a few days? Under 50, that can be a cool look. But when you’re in your seventies and the stubble is grey, unless you’re Pierce Brosnan in a $7,000 Tom Ford suit, it’s a look that says living in a pitch camp under the Manhattan Bridge colonnade.

There are physical mishaps in your 70s that did not happen when you were forty: Food in Teeth; Cream Cheese Face; Shirt Stain. I was visiting old friends in the country recently; old relating to both the duration of friendship and time on earth. The wife is 80; her husband is 81; I’m 74; we have been friends for 50 years. These are relationships in which you don’t have to telegraph Shirt Stain by locking eyes with the dropee and signaling like an aircraft carrier officer helping to land a jet. You can just say, “You’ve got cream cheese on your shirt.”

The dropee, in this case, was me, even though I had driven a red convertible to the country and have, in fact, driven red convertibles for thirty years. Contrary to what the automobile industry would have you believe, when it comes to spilling food on your shirt, red convertibles do not help one bit. I must add, however, when it came to spillage, my friends were just as bad. The husband already had Cream Cheese Lip.

“Were we this messy when we were in our 20’s?” I asked. “It seems to me we were never giving each other all these slob signals. Or did we just not care?”

“Nope”, the husband, who happens to be a doctor, said, “You get older, your nerves are less sensitive. You don’t necessarily realize what’s on your face.”

“And your reflexes are not as sharp,” the wife, who has been researching a book on aging, said.

Do I seem to be focusing on the grooming challenges of octogenarian men here? I would mention female Chin Hair but that would make me so depressed I would have to eat chocolate, which would result in Redistribution of Fat to Midriff rather than where we want it.

You know what I’m talking about; Flat Butt, a problem the magic mirror never told us about when we were twenty-three.

(Yes, darling, those jeans do make your rear look like the back of the cross-town bus, but hold on to this moment, because around the time you’re pulling out your Senior Easy Pay card, you’re going to cherish it. Yes, at exactly the time Megan Thee Stallion is celebrated for her enormous can, Boomer women will have lost theirs. I’d explain Megan, but we’d need a bigger mirror.)

And what about Pink Patch Head, which you have begun to notice in the row ahead of you at Wednesday matinees? (Are you aware that there is a product for hair thinning that contains so-called “hair-building fibers” which cover Pink Patch? I know this only because a close friend told me. It comes in nine natural shades and you just shake it on your head. The shade my friend chose is grey. $24.95 a container and try not to get any on your black top.)

But let us scooch back to the grooming challenges of older men, specifically nose and ear hair. I first learned about this condition as a little kid, in advertisements in the back of comic books where you could order a sea urchin, guaranteed to be delivered dead. Why ads for nose hair trimmers were in comic books I do not know; possibly so little kids could point out physical shortcomings to their grandparents, who consider anything grandchildren say publication-ready.

Little Janie just told me I had hair coming out of my ears and asked if that meant I would die soon and she could have my room. Isn’t that hilarious?

Here is what is particularly awful about excessive ear and nostril hair growth: There are no hand signals for it. A friend may have ear hair so long you could Captain Jack Sparrow beard bead it and there is nothing you can do to gently indicate there is a problem.

Twirl a non-existent ringlet next to your hair? That’s the five-year-old signal for crazy.

Make up a story involving an insect? Oh, heavens, an extra long hairy centipede has emerged from your ear – no, sorry, it was something else.

Only a beloved partner can tell the afflicted they need to get to a barber. And you better hope they do. Collapse in Union Square with that flyaway ear hair, stained clothing and grey stubble on your chin and you — yeah, I’m looking at you — are doomed.